Every November I quietly celebrate my anniversary as a non-sex worker. I meditate on my achievements in life since those dark days. I think of all of the simple things in my life such as my comfortable squalor and all of the relationships I have with people who are not creepy.

Though sex work may afford you with some financial security, it will likely riddle you with new insecurities. For me that same feeling that you had after you sold the man your panties never diminished. For me this shaky-kneed, heart-pounding feeling is the alarm of my inner creep detection system. For me, I suspect that experiencing that feeling on a regular basis resulted in panic attacks. My alarm sometimes misfires.

In my case, another possible long term side effect of sex work turned out to be social anxiety. I am going on my 10 year anniversary as a non stripper, and these things have diminished over a long period of time. I have tried therapy, but what seems to work best is doing relatively normal things around relatively normal people.

Work in strip clubs was like wearing something like a birth control or nicotine patch with varying degrees of creepy being sent right into my blood streams at all time. When I "punched out" at the end of the day, I began to find that I couldn't just take of this 'patch' and undo all of the creepiness in a 'day's work. It permeated my being until I myself became pretty creepy for a while.

By your age, I was already 'retired' from sex work. Unlike you, I did not go into sex work with a college degree. I went there not quite directly from high school with a long sob story. I had some kind of other retarded supposably 'artistic' aspirations throughout the whole thing. Similar to you, I did want to use sex work for supporting my education. I was pissed off that two different sets of step siblings were rewarded nice education packages in their divorce settlements. I stupidly believed that my parents/grandparents would jump in and intervene with college loot and everyone would live happily ever after.

I did have some gloriously good times and made better money than I ever could in any real job at the time. The good times and money were like heroin that made me throw up yet feel wonderful all at the same time. Continuing to search for financial well being and giddy freedom from a drone like existence certainly could provide an exhilarating rush. The problem is the lingering wicked hangover that I haven't entirely shook.

I had some shitty regular jobs prior to being a stripper that were better than the ones that I got in the immediate aftermath. By 24, I committed metaphorical felony arson on many 'bridges' in my life and there just weren't a lot of people in the world who had too many nice things to say about me being a nice, normal person doing socially acceptable work. Without the strip club experience, my resume consisted of a word processing certificate from a trade school, random credits from the liberal arts program at the local junior college, and some random restaurant/grocery store/retail/office work. For the noticeable gaps, my trump card was, 'stay at home mom.'

At 25, you already have so much more going for you than I ever did at that time and I think that especially video taped sex work could just cause so many unintended side effect disasters on your life. These potential side effects could be the very antithesis of your ultimate intentions.

As very fucking normal as I am now, not having ever been recorded on tape in a professional sex worker capacity, I have been somewhat discreet in terms of my disclosure. For the purpose of building my resume, or attending college from the age of late 19 to early 24, I made some very poor choices. My mid to late 20's were dedicated to building a normal rapport with people and the workplace. It was about building relationships that ultimately would finally lead people to say nice things about me. I've found myself on a bittersweet career ladder. I am living the limp dick dream at a Fortune 500 company. I make a little more money than you and have a sweet benefits package. Every now and then for barely a moment I will slip back into my sex worker fantasy. I still give out that special something that makes me feel like so many men that I deal with are humping my leg in their mind's eyes.

I'm $37,000 in debt with student loans on kind of a bull shitty BA that I haven't even COMPLETED (26 more credits)...I think maybe I would discretely fuck just one guy for $1000 a week. At this rate, keeping my current normal job and classes otherwise intact, with one single fuck appointment per week it would solve my debt and even give me enough left over for a brand new economy car. As long as my sex worker financial fantasy remains abstract, it almost works. I never was on tape and I never fucked, jacked off or sucked anyone off for money. In theory, I still don't even see anything wrong with prostitution. In actual practice, I know it would fuck me up.

Sure, sex work may work very well for some people. I think that it just fucks most people up. You've so many options you can't even see right now. Don't obstruct it with bullshit.

Do it.

It's easy money, and the lack of nudity makes any future repercussions basically moot as long as you don't freak out over it.

"Yeah, I needed money in grad school so I let some guy make videos of my feet. So what if some freaky people got off on it? Freaky people get off on everything these days."

You want to get a PHD so that you can teach in a field that you're unable to find a job doing anything but teach. You're capable of getting a PHD but unable to get a job doing anything that earns more than $20.000.00/ year and can't think of a better solution to your problem than selling your underwear or working in the sex industry. I have to wonder what field it is that your looking to teach in, it must be terribly unimportant.